


Cottage Industry

by scuttlesworth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Molly in progress, F/M, Sensualist Mycroft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life lessons are different for every life; Molly's have been particularly awful at times. Mycroft has an eye for pleasure and a need for people he can trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"…can't imagine why you're being so stubborn about this. Jerry's a perfectly nice young man, he has a good job, and it's not as though gentlemen are breaking down the door for you, dear. If you'd just put some effort into your appearance you'd have a much easier time finding a nice man to-" Molly's cell rings, and she feels the familiar rush of relief. Dead body, she thinks, and a deep fondness for whatever smelling, diseased, half-rotted corpse has just found its way down to her Morgue.  


"Sorry mum," she says in a chipper voice. "Work, you know." She grabs her rather large purse and takes a last sip of tea as she stands.  


"I never understood how you could take a job like that, dear," her mum is saying, and it's so familiar that Molly simply doesn't hear it anymore as she leaves. "Working with the dead, it's not as though you weren't strange enough already, it's no wonder men are a bit put off, why you didn't take advantage of all the doctors in medical school when you were there I'll never understand, you could be married and have kids by now - love you too, yes dear - be safe - " and Molly is out the door walking, walking walking. The dim blue evening air is cool and the pavement is empty. She feels set free, the way she always does after a visit with mum.  


The underground is almost empty, and Molly enjoys the lack of a crush of people. She reads on the train, changing lines at the station. The Lancet has a lovely article about medieval accidental death statistics. It's full dark when she heads up the escalator nearest Bart's, but the night alleys don't bother her. Perhaps they should, but they don't. Not anymore.  


She smiles as she hurries past the guard. "Hey Jude," she sings, and he grins at her. "Hey Molls," he replies. He's been here for fifteen years, she's been here for five, and sometimes she sits and has tea with him when things are slow. 

Mycroft is waiting in the morgue. She freezes. He looks at her assentingly. "Molly," he says, his voice as sly as ever. She feels her stomach roil. 

He just watches. Her eyes flicker over the room, taking in the trolley with the corpse. "H-hello," she says, and blushes. She skitters sideways a bit and sets her purse down on the table, dithering. Grabs her lab coat, putting it on over her long light-green sweater and her comfortable pants, which are a shade of dark orange her friends tell her makes her look terrible but she doesn't care. Mostly doesn't care.  


Procrastinating. After a moment she takes a breath and steps forward, all her nerves exposed. On edge. He might, she thinks, be smirking at her, and her lips thin and her chin comes up. She glares at him narrowly. "WhatdoyouwantMycroft?" she says, and now he really is smirking, the prat.  


"Why, just your services, Molly," he says smoothly, and she turns the approximate color of a public phone booth. One plastered with lewd advertisements inside. The thought makes her stumble a bit. Mycroft's hand comes out, smooth and cool, and touches her elbow, and she squeaks.  


Her eyes are shut tight because if she simply does not see the room then the room does not exist. But that's never worked. So she opens them and looks, because it's always best to get the worst over with, and Mycroft - isn't looking at her. He's looking down at the corpse.  
Which is why she is here, after all.  


She reaches for the gloves, snaps them on, takes her professionalism like armor and wraps it around herself. Looks at the body once and then again, really looks, and starts to make lists in her head. She mutters some of them out loud.  


"Male, about sixty-five to seventy, a hundred and fifty three kilos, five foot ten inches tall, one gunshot wound to the head and one to the chest." She reaches out and flexes his fingers, wrist. "Twenty hours ago." She starts with his hair, getting close, looking. "No particulates in his hair but he used product to make it look thicker, because of the hair loss. Old scar to the eyebrow, one on the jaw, left shoulder had surgery some years ago - probably to fix something, maybe a tendon stretched by dislocation? Scars on the elbow, forearm, knuckles. Manicured nails, no trace under them. Stretch marks on his abdomen, some recent weight loss, diet? Heart trouble possible, doctor's orders maybe. Uncircumcised, some fibers here - caught on the hair of his shin - " she grabs tweezers and a plastic bag, deposits dark fibers into it. "Tendency towards ingrown toenails but regularly treated and trimmed." She stands back up from the body, blinks. Stretches. Time melts when she's really looking at something closely, and she hasn't noticed how long it took to go over the corpse. She glances around, surprised.  


Mycroft is still there. He's still standing. He's still looking at her. his gaze makes her want to run away. Or blush. Or - no, not that. "Oh," she says, blankly.  
"Your professional opinion?" he says, and she comes back to herself.  


"Gunshot wounds are COD but there's something off; he didn't bleed as much as he should have," she says. Frowns. "Maybe he was having a heart attack when he was shot?" Her voice is uncertain, she looks over at Mycroft as though this is a quiz and he is the teacher.  


He straightens from leaning on his umbrella. "Very good," he says approvingly, and she flushes again. She's going to end up with dilated capillaries on her face like an alcoholic if this keeps up, she thinks to herself crankily. "Completely wrong, but very good nonetheless," and she pales.  


"Wrong?" she squeaks in dismay. He steps up beside her, next to the body, far too close. "Mmmm," he says. "Poison, not heart attack." His hand on her shoulder, encouraging her to bend closer to the dead face. "The traces of saliva in the mouth," he says mildly, and she feels the stretch in her mind as one half of her tries to focus entirely on his hand on her shoulder and the other angrily wants to study the corpse and see what she missed.  


She straightens. Turns her head and glares at him. "If you knew, why have me look?" she says, and Mycroft's whiskey eyes are looking down at her from such a close distance. His breath brushes her face and she feels dizzy.  


"Trustworthy second opinions can be difficult for me to come by," he says in such a gentle voice, and she's still standing there when he's gone. Two men she's never seen before wearing orderly's uniforms come in from the hallway and wheel the corpse away.  


She goes home. 

 

"And he said I was being selfish. Really, selfish! Him, the one with the second bank account he doesn't think I know about! So I took this," and Katherine holds up a platinum credit card in two perfectly manicured fingers and waves it around, "And tonight all the drinks are on me." Molly sips her pinot and eyes the card. It has a man's name on it, and for the hundredth time she wonders how someone like Katherine gets away with it. Identity theft, fraud, and still bartenders let women like Katherine use a card with some man's name and never once say "no". Molly is quite sure if she tried that, the bartender would give her a Look, and ask questions.  


She begs off between bars, heading home on unsteady feet. There are protests, but not strong ones. Katherine and her friends. Skinny, perfect Katherine, who has always had a man to care for her but who maintains a career in banking anyways. Molly has known her since college. Where Molly's better, kinder college friends have moved away and moved on over the years, Katherine, who makes Molly somewhat uncomfortable, remains.  


That's life, though. 

 

"Harder," her coach says encouragingly. She tries, she really does. The woman, all short legs and short hair and hard hard muscle, sighs. "You shouldn't be giving it love taps, love," she says with a shake of her head, and Molly blinks sadly at the punching bag. "Picture the face of someone you're angry with on it," the woman advises as she turns away to help another student, and Molly suddenly sees, sees. A face. Hears a lilt. And she hits, hard and fast and scared, and something in her taped-up hand makes a funny popping noise but she doesn't feel the pain yet, she's kicking the way she was shown, up and sideways. Again, again, and suddenly her instructor is there holding her arms and she freezes.  


Coach is unwrapping the tape around her hand. Her face is neutral. "Bad form on the punch," she says critically, and Molly feels a come-down, but the next words lift her again. "Good energy, though. Very good, this time," and the woman pats her wrist. "But now you'll need x-rays. That, my dear, is why form is important; you want to damage the other person, not yourself." 

She uses the x-ray machine in the morgue. Better to do it herself than try and stammer her way through some sort of explanation in the ER. Nothing is broken. She wraps her own hand, using gauze from the morgue kit.  
She goes home. 

 

It is summer and she is jogging in the park. Her hair bounces behind her to the beat of her feet and the music in her ears and she's got this, she really does, the rhythm of this running thing. She never ran before but now she does.  
There's a homeless man beside the trail. She is almost up to him when his hands slip his coat open and he exposes the most filthy erection she's ever seen. The look on his face is anticipatory, lips parted, teeth exposed, eyes hungry and darting. She jogs in place for a moment, then stops and looks closer. She doesn't bother to take out her earbuds.  


"Syphilis, probably, and maybe staph," she says to him in a voice loud enough to be heard over her ear buds, and gives him a sympathetic grimace. "There's pills and a cream. You should see the clinic over on Smith," and she turns and bounces on.  


Two weeks later he's on her table. He was drunk and drowned in a lake in the same pond she jogs on. There are antibiotics in his filthy coat pocket, and she thinks, oh, he listened! It makes her day, and she hums a happy tune as she puts him in the fridge. 

 

"Your hair," her mother says, and even though she's on the other end of the phone Molly touches her hair uneasily. "I've made you an appointment, there's this brilliant young man. He does miracles, and I said, well if anyone needs a miracle it's my daughter, she's hopeless."  
Molly thinks, no I'm not. I'm hopeful.  


She doesn't say it, though. 

 

The man really can do miracles. One of them is to do nothing except give her a trim and tell her that her hair is one of the nicest things he's had to work with in ages. "So many older women come in," he says, lisping from his pierced tongue. "Thin, brittle, too many bleaches, nothing to work with, and they want perfection. You, though, you have perfection. You haven't done anything to it to damage it. I don't get to work with this often," and he smiles at her in the mirror, and she sits still and makes herself smile back. By the end of it, after the shampoo and glorious scalp massage, she's relaxed. She can't tense up every time a gay man comes near her. She's got to learn to cope. So she makes another appointment with him, specifically.  


Confront the things you fear. Even if you fail. That, she's good at that. 

 

Mycroft. In the Morgue. Again.  


This time it's a woman. She's not beautiful. She's older, stocky, with a build that reminds Molly of her coach. Black hair, though, and bad dental work. "Foreign?" Molly guesses, peering at her teeth. "Eastern Europe, somewhere, maybe?" She was stabbed and dropped into a sewer, and rats have gnawed most of her fingers and face away. The dental work is on display.  


Mycroft nods. His fingers brush her shoulder as she stands.  


As he's leaving, she calls after him softly. "How is he?"  


Mycroft freezes. Does not turn to look at her. "Alive," he says, and there's world in his voice of bleakness and relief. They stand for a long moment, then he resumes walking, and she watches his well-tailored back walk down the corridor. 

 

Katherine in a bar. Twice in two months; it's because of the disastrous breakup with the man whose platinum card Katherine waved around last time. Friends, she exclaims, are required. Molly is rather surprised to be included.  


This time Katherine is drunk, drunk for real, and Molly watches as the man with the slick smile steps up beside her at the bar, where she's fetching drinks. The other women are busy discussing something to do with the best place to purchase purses. Molly watches as he hands Katherine a glass, already full. Molly didn't see the drink being poured and stands. Walks over, and takes it out of Katherine's hand before she can get a sip. Smiles a sharp little smile at the surprised man, one that doesn't reach her eyes, and steers Katherine (protesting all the way) back over to the group.  


"Why on earth would you be such blocking little…" Katherine looses the train of her insult and her eyes narrow. Molly sets the drink on the table, fishes out a drugs test kit from the bottom of her purse. It's been sitting in there for over a year, and the edges are worn and dirty. The inside is fine, though, the foil unbroken. She uses the pipette to drip some of the liquid on the strip. The entire group is watching, eyes wide. Molly, for once, isn't embarrassed.  


She watches it turn hot pink. Hands the strip and the little fold-out piece of paper to the least-drunk of the little party. "Oh my god," the woman says, her eyes getting huge. "Oh my god, Katherine, I think she just saved your life."  


It is humiliating to be the center of attention. Humiliating and gratifying. They hunt, rather loudly and drunkenly, for the man; he's long since gone. They spend half an hour hanging all over the bouncer explaining in unconnected bits about the event, and another describing the whole thing all over again to the constable. Who, when he sees Molly, smiles. "Molls!" he exclaims, and she gins. "Barry?" and he nods. He comes in with homeless corpses form time to time.  


Her friends are quite impressed that the cute constable knows Molly. They are, one and all, looking at her in a different light. It's rather nice. 

 

Mycroft. Not in the Morgue. Mycroft in a car, in front of her house, leaning back in the seat. Wearing the suit, of course, but no tie, and his shirt buttons are undone and there's lipstick on his lips, perfume clinging to the wool of his jacket. Hand clamped over a bleeding forearm. She has a first aide kit the size of a toolbox under her sink; when she sees the damage, she drags him out of the car and into her kitchen.  


"Why not go to John?" she scolds. "He's the doctor! For living people. And trustworthy," and she glares up at him. He's watching, arm held away from himself as he sits in her little yellow kitchen at the table, an expression of vaguely fascinated distaste on his face as she studies the wound. He hisses like a snake when she pours disinfectant over the slice, and looks irked when she shaves the hair away so she can stitch it up.  


"Not… available," Mycroft says, tightly. "At the moment." She sights and nods. Bends her head and carefully, neatly draws the thread through his skin.  
When she is done, he studies her work. Moves his fingers. Looks at her. "Not available and not nearly as lovely to have the attentions of," he murmurs, one eyebrow quirking, and she knows she turns red, and he leans forward and kisses her on the lips.  


He tastes like brandy and licorice. He kisses like something hot and deadly, like those summer days when your head spins. She has no idea how she got from her seat across from him to his lap, but his good hand is under her jumper, on the skin of her side, and she sucks in air desperately as his clever fingers come around her back to the clasp on her bra.  


"Mycroft," she whispers, confused, and her shirt is up and his lips are on her nipple, sucking, teeth biting when she wriggles until she throws her head back and yelps. He has his good arm wrapped around her waist and his mouth still on her breast. He doesn't use his injured arm, but stands, moving into the living room. She's stumbling backward, trying to stay upright when the world has tipped sideways. Finding herself on her back on her own couch is a welcome and steady relief, although her pants being around her ankles and Mycroft's head between her thighs is something else again. Something she's never felt. Oh, his lips, his nose, his clever clever…  


"Mycroft," she says, trying to come up with a rational thing to say, some excuse to stop this, but he is there, over her, wool suit jacket gone and pants scraping the soft flesh of her thighs and he is kissing her again. And then he's inside her, and she cannot for the life of her figure out how it happened, but he's definitely wearing a condom so that's all right, isn't it? It's all right for her to scrape her fingers through the hair at the back of his skull, and kiss him hard while he pushes inside her again and again, hips rocking, arms braced, and it's all right for her to arch up and spread her legs wide, wide enough for his hips to grind down even with the couch back blocking one knee. It's all right for her to cry out, a startled yelp, when he buries his face in her neck and thrusts and she comes apart.  


He is shaking with aftershocks. She slides her fingers through his hair, contemplating the widow's peak. The curve of his ear. He lifts his head, eyes dark on hers, and she sees things sliding around inside his mind like cars on a freeway at night. Re-arranging.  


She pulls on his ear, hard. He yanks his head back and glares. "No," she says firmly.  


He looks wary. "No, you do not get to apologize," she says, and he blinks, and she knows she caught him by surprise.  


He looks away. "Molly…"  


She mocks his tone of voice. "Mycroft…"  


His head turns back and he glares at her. She raises her eyebrows. Lets a shift of her pelvis remind him that he is, although now soft, still inside her. He looks stunned and appalled, and she giggles, which makes him wince, which makes her giggle harder. He buries his face in her neck again and groans, and withdraws, and whatever her feelings about this whole night, that feeling is one of loss. Of coolness where there was heat. She sighs, and stretches.  


He stands, tucking himself back together. Re-applying the mask. She watches from the sofa, her body naked from the waist down, shirt rucked up with her breasts exposed. She doesn't feel shame yet, not while his eyes drift over her and his hands still on his suit. Not while he looks like he wouldn't mind spending more time on this, like he's thinking of other things he'd like to do. She lets her hands touch her sides, then sighs and tugs her jumper down. Not now, no. Maybe later.  


He doesn't kiss her when he leaves. Just stands close and looks at her eyes. "Molly," he says, and if he isn't one to kiss, she is. Her lips brush his cheek. She smiles at him gently. "Mycroft," she says, and closes the door behind him after he's gone.


	2. Lead Me Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trouble with being very very smart is that sometimes it's completely indistinguishable from being very, very stupid. 
> 
> Mycroft is very, very smart indeed.

“Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?  
Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-  
Arthur Dent: Oh.  
Ford Prefect: What happened?  
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.”   
― Douglas Adams, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts

 

***

 

There is a small dip in the price of wool from Sheffield. There is an outbreak of ringworm in a public school in Suffolk. The Elephant and Castle tube stop has shut for maintenance on the bathroom floors from 3 am to 4 am. A private in the Argentinean Defense Force has been convicted of selling cocaine to the remaining British diplomats on the Falkland Islands. A Japanese tourist in Edinburgh has fallen down the stairs at the castle, and claims amnesia. Sherlock is in Wyoming. 

Wyoming. 

Mycroft's hands freeze over the computer keyboard. He lets them fall to his lap to rest, still pale birds on his dark wool trousers. 

Wyoming. 

It does not fit. 

He sighs, sets it aside in a small wooden cigar box and moves the box onto the lift that goes up to the attic of his mind. To his inner eye, the lift looks like a red public phone booth suspended in a brass cage. He's been keeping the entire investigation up there, at the top. Out of the way but still present. 

He returns to the computer. A street gang in Leeds has been using Shakespearean poetry in their tags. Four streetlights in a row along the A4 have been put out with a slingshot. An anti-government protester on trial for assaulting a police officer has pled not guilty. A shipping container holding smartphones from China has turned up half empty. The husband of the Undersecretary for Ministerial Oversight Into Manufacturing is having an affair with her secretary.

He will never admit that sometimes, it's boring. Necessary. He has goals, he has discipline. But - sometimes - after so many little things come in and are sorted and strung together, little inverted worlds of facts like dew on a spiderweb - sometimes they all start to look alike, to him. The people. The events. 

He's overdue for a night to himself, really. And he would do. Except for the corpse wedged into the skip in Croyden. 

It's a friend. Well. An acquaintance. Well, the man would have been surprised to know that, after all; really, he's someone Mycroft met once ages ago, then set surveillance on. His name was irrelevant; his biography a pathetic list of an ordinary childhood turned to an easier way of making money, then later turned again from crime into the secret world of Mycroft Holmes and Not Letting Things Fall Apart. 

If it had been a heart attack in his bed, it would have been all right. If it had been a car accident, or a glassing in the pub during a fight, or a drowning on holiday or any of a thousand other ways to die, Mycroft would not have cared. The man was a component part, and half the beauty of his job was fitting component parts into places where they did jobs that made the world machine work. But no; it was a shooting. Not just murder, but obvious, bog standard, no effort made to hide it, can't be anything but deliberate murder. 

That meant it could be relevant. That meant it could be because the man was part of Mycroft's structure, part of the thing he's been building all his life, the thing he sits in the middle of, surrounded by every second of every day. Gears and levers and belts and switches. A cog, smashed with a hammer. 

Time to find out who. 

There is the mortuary under Madam Tussard's. The company doctor attends, dry, boring, thorough, wearing women's stockings and heels and a white lab jacket as his bald dome and flat eyeglasses gleam equally under the halogen lights. Mycroft finds him soothing, generally. Tonight he sees the man make a mistake. An easy mistake, an obvious one. Something anyone could do, even someone who's been working with the dead for ages. The man shows no sign of worry, of stress; he genuinely doesn't seem to have noticed. Mycroft still can't take the risk. He doesn't live on guesswork. 

"Pack the body for transport," Mycroft says, and the orderlies do so. The medical examiner pinches his lips shut, not happy at this display of a lack of trust. Mycroft ignores him. "Bart's," Mycroft says, and sends Anthea to ride with the corpse while he rides in the car. 

 

 

He stands in the dim, cool room which smells of disinfectant and fecal matter. Molly comes in. Sees him. Freezes. Mouse, he thinks absently, looking at the way her eyes grow huge and flicker about. Her hands wring, just for a moment, and she's back to looking at him. She moves like she's terrified. Wraps herself in the armor of science. He wants to twitch an eyebrow, say "boo" and watch her jump. He wants to twist her hair behind her head, draw the skin of her face tight, hold her while she - no. 

No. Little useful Molly. Trustworthy Molly. Helpful, sweet, nice Molly. He doesn't deal with nice people. Nice people don't deserve his attention. Nice people stay with nice people, they don't end up under his eye. Just being in the room with her is an anomaly of space and time that should never have happened in a perfect world. Damn Sherlock. 

While she examines the body he watches the back of her ear, the way her brown hair is tucked up, and thinks if he touched her there her lips would part. It's a thought he sets on fire and burns. It has no place. 

He's making a perfect world. When he's done, the Mollies of the world will never need to share breathing space with the things like him. The predators. 

He looks away. 

 

 

When he leaves, Anthea looks at him. "Dani," he says, and Anthea nods. He doesn't miss the twitch of her lips, though. Disapproval. 

After the first time she met Dani, in the back of his car, while she glared out her window; their sole discussion. "You can do better," Anthea said, and Mycroft laughed. "Not the point at all," he replied in kind tones. She sulked a good five more minutes before coming out with the spectacularly unoriginal observation, "She's just using you." It was more, he thought, about Anthea having to say the words than about her expecting them to have any effect at all; since she so rarely made that particular mistake, he let it go without comment. 

It was the last thing she ever said on the subject. At least, out loud. 

Dani greets him at the door wearing a satin bra the same color as tanned her skin and matching boy short panties. Her nails are lacquered pink; her lips are the precise colour of dried blood. She smells like coconut and pineapple and rum and sex. Her black hair is held back by pins with sparkling flowers. She's wearing more sparkling things around her neck, in her ears and around her wrists. They glitter with the same cold, mercenary shine as her eyes. He feels something inside him unwind and relax at the sight of this; known, expected, perfect. He steps up to the house, crowding her back into the entrance, and she's devouring his mouth before the door is closed. 

 

 

There's an increase in the price of biofuel due to a drought in the midwestern United States. There's a local drop in the price of lamb due to a good season in the North. The Syrian ambassador's nephew told his friend he wanted to star on a reality TV show about cooking. The online hacktivist group s1khf1c is hosting a crypto party in an art gallery on Thursday. An elderly MP has had a chunk of his assets frozen as part of an ill-advised financial deal in Belarus. Someone has poured dry concrete into the toilets at the Marks and Sparks at Newton Abbot. He despises that nickname - nicknames in general, actually, and Sherlock once pointed out with great acerbity they differentiated from code names very little, not the time for fond recollections of arguments past, moving on - but the data collector who used it is excellent in every other respect. Someone in France has purchased there hundred euros of dual-use kitchen equipment at Saturn Domus using cash; bless the stupid ones who don't think to buy used or from more than one location. There's an internet furor on an obscure website about the exposure of the real identity of an accused paedophile. 

 

 

It is six months and he is in the library, the room kept for him. The rest of the flat is hers to do with as she pleases; this room is his alone. It has a small but exquisite bar, a wall covered in books published centuries ago, a fireplace. And a chair. 

He's fully clothed down to his shoes, sitting in the one chair. It's mid-brown leather, cracked and comfortable, facing the fire but not too close. Dani sways before him on stiletto heels that probably cost as much as a month's rent on this flat. His brandy is stunningly expensive, the meal an hour before was superb, and Dani is taking her time, slowly letting the firelight play over the dip of her waist, the shift of her thighs. Her nails are purple and her movements meditative as she drags them along her belly, leaving trails of goosebumps in their wake. 

The phone in his pocket vibrates. Without taking his eyes from where Dani pinches her nipples, he lifts the phone to his ear. He doesn't say anything; after a moment, he puts the phone back in his pocket, sips his brandy, and stands. Dani glares after him as he leaves without looking back. 

 

 

 

There are excuses. Of course. He'd meant to never see her alone again. But his medical examiner is on holiday - still in London, just being a woman this week instead of a man. And his backup is tremendously hung-over, while on-call, which means he won't be working for the machine anymore. Possibly this was the boy's intent; it's not always easy, the things he asks of his people. 

He could send someone else. Of course. Get a report later. Something on paper or the computer screen. 

He goes anyways. 

 

 

She's different. Doesn't flinch at the sight of him. Blinks, then moves towards the corpse. Studies it with those curious eyes. He can smell her; soap, mostly. Her fingers are thin and flutter over the body like moths. Her nails are blunt and practical. He thinks of those hands, cool on his skin, and waits. 

She gives him his answer. He touches her without thinking, plucking a strand of her hair from her shoulder and concealing it in his pocket. He'll throw it away later. She twitches at the touch and blinks up at him, eyes huge, and he takes his thoughts and himself away. 

He's been indulging too much lately. Time to shut it down. Go on a diet. Regain control of his vices. A man should never be ruled by his wants. 

But oh, how Mycroft Holmes wants. 

 

 

There was a hoax bomb threat at the Deal port building. There is a real bomb no-one has called about sitting quiescent under a bus station at Ipswitch. There is a storm coming in off the water at Lowestoft which has reduced visibility to two meters; it's part of a front which came down from Estonia and blanketed Amsterdam with over three feet of snow. There is a sale on itching powder in the magic shop on Charing Cross. The Institute for Public Policy research will be hosting a dinner for several distinguished international visitors tonight. There has been a spate of small-scale illicit logging in Elmstead Wood, another at the Carron Valley Resivoir, and a third in Banagher Forest. A dozen dead carrier pigeons were found with broken necks on Hoglinns Water in Hoy. There's been an outbreak of what could be malaria along the Baie de Lanveur. Central and western Australia are experiencing heavy rains. Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland is experiencing a hard freeze. Sherlock is in Siberia. 

Mycroft looks at that fact, and finds no reaction whatsoever to it within his mind, except a faint shudder and a gratitude that it's not his own toes freezing off. And possibly a low-level worry that this means he'll have to use up an operative there. He really can't afford to use up his Siberian operatives. They're desperately difficult to come by, and frequently die of alcoholism. 

He packs it away. They've found satellite imagery of a large-scale drugs operation in Khangai Nuruu National Park. 

 

 

It's a cold night. Drizzling. The city lights sparkle on the wet. The preceding 48 hours have been hell, and a significant portion of this is his sibling's fault. He does not need another diplomatic incident with Greece, not when he's put so much work lately into trying to rebuild their economy. 

Dani is waiting for him in the entrance. He tucks his umbrella in the stand by the door. Pulls off his overcoat, hangs it precisely in the closet. Turns and she steps from the shadows, wearing pearls, a white silk dress and white thigh-high leather boots. Her black hair is up in a bun, held by white chopsticks; she's not wearing anything under the dress. There's just a sliver of skin between the top of the boot and the bottom of the skirt. She smirks at him, her fingers trailing up her inner thigh, nudging at the skirt. He smiles sharply back at her; she turns her back and sways down the hall, a pale shadow in the darkness. 

He steps into his room and she whirls, pushing him into his chair, straddling his thighs. She tugs the dress up over her head. The white fabric hides her face for a moment while it reveals her breasts, the dusky nipples peaked in the chill air, right there. He leans forwards and sucks one into his mouth and she arches, groans. His hands are busy on her bum, kneading and squeezing, and she drops the dress on the floor behind her and leans forwards. Tugs his head off her breast and kisses him with all her skill, one hand fisted in his hair to hold him still and his hands on her ass stop because her other hand - 

In the boot, of course. A knife. He has been unforgivably stupid. The cut slices his arm down through wool and cotton and skin and muscle, a hot sharp sting that he refuses to look at. His free hand, the one not protecting his throat from her swipe, shoves her in the stomach and she falls backwards hard off his lap, onto her ass on the rug. He stands, looks down at her. His blood is soaking his shirtsleeve. He refuses to acknowledge this fact in her presence. 

She looks up at him, legs splayed open, knife by her hand. He doesn't bother to kick at it. She swallows. Glares. Defiant. 

"Run away, little girl," he says to her gently. Then he turns and walks from the room, from the house, from his regular little escape and this much larger near-miss.

Her scent is all over him, on his clothing, his skin, everywhere and he cannot stand it. It nauseates him, the musk and thickness of it no longer a ripe sensual comfort but a thick rotting lie. Like flowers a week after a funeral, he thinks morbidly, his hand wrapped around his forearm to staunch the bleeding. It's a long, deep slice. He needs medical care. Stitches. 

His own doctor is trustworthy enough for a prostate exam, but this is another layer of secrets. This weakness, this open wound - no-one can know. The machine he built, that he lives in and loves with all his soul - that machine is made of cruel gears, and it must never know that he has blood like a human instead of ice or oil. That leaves two medical professionals. John is home. John is not drunk. John will gleefully stitch up his arm. And if Sherlock ever comes home, John will tell him, in a heartbeat, for no reason better than to make him smile. 

He takes a seat in the car. "Molly," he says, and the car moves. 

 

 

He's never been to her flat before. Never even looked at the photos on file. It's small, up near Hampstead Heath, on the edge between the nicer places and the less-nice, but near enough a tube station to get her to work with only a bit of misery in winter. He calls up her number on his phone. Dials. Listens as she answers. Her sweet, uncertain voice. "Hello?" 

"Molly," he says, and her breath catches. "Please come to the door." 

She does. 

Oh, he is a foolish man. 

 

 

He sits rigidly at her kitchen table, arm held away, and eyes her truly ridiculous first aide kit. Although really, it's more like a small emergency surgery in there; the components are contained in something that looks like a toolbox or a fisherman's tackle box, only white and with a green cross on it. There's a bag of saline drip, needles, tubes of sterile eyewash, enough gauze to bandage a mummy, scissors, tweezers, ointments, creams, bottles of antiseptic in three colors, cooling gel, heat packs - he wonders if there are in fact actual band-aids in there somewhere. He can't see any. 

She leans over his arm. Her hair is hanging between her face and his gaze. Probably a good thing; her fingers on his arm, sewing the injury up, are making him hard. How pathetic. How uncontrolled. She's scolding him, her voice a wash of sound. She is pale, a thing untouched by sunlight, but her kitchen is bright and cheerful. He saw her living room on the way in. Everything in this space is meant to bring warmth and beauty into life. 

Her house smells like oranges and bleach and cat - not strong, but the smell of an animal is there, something alive. Molly smells like lavender and, faintly, formaldehyde. He wants to lean over and sniff her hair. He leans back, instead. She looks up. "Why not go to John?" she asks, and there's the turned-up end of her nose, and the clear brown of her eyes. Something in there, like tea without milk, like the darkness of a tarn in the wild hills, water washed down through oak leaves to collect, as deep as endless night and as transparent as air. Something, something. 

Mycroft knows his poets, knows they are all struck by eyes. Cornea, pupil, iris, suspensory ligaments. Oh, he's held in suspense there. Aqueous and vitreous humors, sclera, macula. He's hit an optic nerve. Eyes are not windows to the soul, Mycroft Holmes, and you should be glad indeed because yours would show nothing but ashes and screams if they were. She is leaning in, lips parted, as though this question matters to her, and Mycroft manages some excuse. Something that is true but not detailed, and then he takes her lips. 

They taste exactly as he imagined, like some bittersweet white wine. She was sitting and reading when he called, he saw the book, the glass on his way in. He sucks it from her bottom lip and she gives a breathy little whimper, her fingertips dancing on his arm the way they danced over the corpse. Wings, he thinks, as he tugs gently on her shoulder and she drifts onto his lap. Wings. Their positions are a mockery of Dani earlier. 

He leans his head back and surrenders to her. Her head is bent over him, her hair a curtain around them both. Her hips under his hands are round. Up, he wants her skin, her pale pale skin, and she's warm where his fingers are cool, so smooth. Up, the faint bumps of her spine, the clasp of her bra. One-handed, a trick from his college days, something practiced for hours with a bra and a mannequin before ever being tried on a woman, the mysteries of lingerie falling to his study. He was mocked for being gay, knowing the difference between a balconette and a bandeau. But only by the men. Never by the women. 

Never by Molly, who gasps, back arching, eyes wide and dark and startled. Deer, he thinks, seeing a dark road at night and a fast-moving luxury car and there, suddenly, standing head up and eyes as large as Molly's, a doe. He'd come screeching to a halt and she had bounded off and he was left with his heart racing and his memory replaying over and over, that look. This look. He wants to slide his hand around, feel her nipples. She whispers his name. 

Prelude to no. Prelude to stop. Prelude to thinking when she should be feeling, feeling like he is. He slips her shirt and bra up under her chin and takes one raspberry-red nipple, all puckered and fading to pink and then pale breast and sucks it into his mouth, flicks it with his tongue, lets it pop free and blows on it. No further words come out; her throat works and her eyes glaze. Pleasure, he thinks. Nothing but pleasure. He nips lightly with his lips on the side of her little breast and she writhes on his lap, grinding against his erection, and he stands. She slides down his body and he's pressing kisses onto her neck, up, finding her ear and walking her backwards, unerringly towards the couch without once looking for it. Her breasts rub against his jacket, brushing the nipples, and he bends his head again to suck the other one. She makes noises. 

Little cries, little moans he isn't sure she knows are coming from her mouth, sounds so light they wouldn't be heard one room over. His good arm is locking her waist against him, his injured one is stroking her side, her arms are wrapped around his neck. He manages to be graceful, getting her back onto the couch before pressing his lips between her breasts and slowly kissing his way down her belly, down, breath on the skin of her stomach. Her hips lift and his fingers have the buttons on her slacks undone. He tugs them down; they trap her ankles. Now she can't run from him. 

He bends his head and looks at her. Brown, soft curls between her thighs, the glint of red wetness there, the smell of hot honest spice coming from her. The ripe curve of her hip, the way her thigh tapers down to the tendons behind her knee. His fingers trace his gaze. Goosebumps, oh, evidence. He ducks under her knee, between her thighs, and bends his head. 

She tastes like sour wine and sweet cream. He nuzzles the soft curls, inhales, licks the folds and secrets out of her. Thrusts his tongue and sucks gently, rubbing his face against her over and over. She calls his name, something panicked in her voice, and he comes up to look at her eyes. 

They are as dark as night. Blind with things unsaid, yes and no and this is a bad idea, really it is, with I don't love you, I barely know you, you're going to pull your stitches, if you don't come inside me right now I will cry. Her lips are very red, bitten and wet and he has the condom meant for Dani out and on with practiced ease, and he's there. 

He's there, pushing while she holds him. Opens for him as though he were known and welcome, as though he belonged there, as though her kindness could encompass everything and every one and make it all better. As though she were, in fact, possible and real. And she comes around him, hot and trembling, he makes sure of that before he rocks his hips inside her again and again and his balls tighten and heat convulses out from the tips of his toes to his scalp in a shuddering tingle. 

It is several seconds before his brain comes back online with a terrible rush and he knows he is an unforgivable monster. He looks up to see her eyes, and she is looking back at him with darkly glimmering amusement. Her fingers are stroking along his neck. He wants to say it, how sorry he is, how he never meant - She yanks on his ear. Hard. 

"No," she says mildly, and he stares. What? 

"No, you do not get to apologize," she says, and he blinks. No-one does that. He's not safe to do that to. It's not safe to be in the same room as him, never mind this. This, what he's done. 

"Molly…" he begins, and doesn't know where to go from here. 

Her voice echoes his with the nicest mockery he's ever heard. "Mycroft," she says, with nothing behind it but laughter, and he shuts his mouth. How to explain his life to her. How to even start telling someone who speaks a completely different language about the things that he will bring to her doorstep. Death, and blood, and hollow men. And then she rolls her hips and dear god he wasn't expecting that. She giggles, and he can feel it in his softening cock where they're still joined, and he knows he's making a face and she giggles even harder and he has to pull out before he makes a complete fool of himself. 

She's not a mouse. Or a deer. She lies there exposed before his gaze. Her lips and nipples are red from his mouth, bright against her pale skin. She looks up at him, her eyes wondering and wise, and stretches. Arms over her head, eyes closing, ribcage arching up. He feels lust spike through him, pointlessly. Tugs the condom off and tucks it into his pocket, tucks himself away. She watches him, her little white teeth worrying her bottom lip, and for the first time in decades he feels ever so slightly self-conscious. 

 

 

For all her understanding, for all the way she looks at him half-shy and half-wanton - for all she thinks she knows - he knows this was not a good thing to do. It was a weak, selfish, stupid mistake. Dangerous for her, dangerous for himself, dangerous for the machine, the grand expedient. It was, and it must not be repeated. But when she kisses his cheek at the door, he closes his eyes and inhales the scent of her, there by her ear, and thinks of sitting in an overstuffed chair with her curled up on his lap, and perhaps a cat sitting in front of the fire, and tea, and toast. Domestic delights. Molly would be a richness of flavor he's never had. Would, indeed. 

The costs of those sorts of pleasures are so much higher than money. He could buy and sell a dozen small islands, but he cannot afford that life. The secret to happiness is not to want things you cannot have. He has always been happy in his own way, before. There has never been anything he could not have, except his brother working beside him. 

He doesn't look back when he leaves her.

**Author's Note:**

> ***  
> Hello end notes, I've never used you before.  
> ***
> 
> Ok, so this one - I'm a bit not sure about.
> 
> Molly is rather complicated. She's so shy, but only in specific circumstances, and she's kind of a BAMF when seen from the perspective of a normal person. It's only because there are so many genius madmen around her that she looks at all ordinary. 
> 
> Mycroft strikes me as a man who loves the finer things - food, sex, clothing, everything. Molly might be a bit out of his usual, but that's not exactly a deterrent. 
> 
> I hope this worked out.


End file.
